Forgive this self-indulgence, but after 20 years of trying to figure out what the heck is happening — and happened — to big league baseball, I arrived at a conclusion. 

Happened Tuesday. The Mets’ Jeff McNeil singled in the automatic runner — a pinch runner for the automatic runner, no less — who was automatically placed on second to give the Mets a win based on artificial additives, another reality-deprived, Rob Manfred Era “innovation” to create artificial excitement. 

As Gary Cohen, calling the game on SNY, became unglued as if he’d just been nailed by a cattle prod, the Mets rushed from the dugout to mob McNeil as if they’d just won the World Series, the Peloponnesian War and the Yankee Stadium 50-50 raffle. 

Such excess has become so obligatory, forced, fleeting and insincere — just a cheap imitation of previous cheap imitations — that generations of high-achievement professional ballplayers and triple-IQ fans would view as preposterous.